vsVapi
vsRetell
Vapi and Retell are the two platforms developers reach for to build a voice agent. Both are excellent at that, and both leave the rest of the phone system to you. Patch gives you the agent and the rest in one place.
Vapi is a voice AI orchestration layer. You pick the speech-to-text, the language model and the voice, Vapi runs the conversation loop, and you pay a platform fee per minute (about US$0.05) plus whatever the model, voice and telephony cost underneath. It is flexible and very configurable.
Retell is similar but more packaged: around US$0.07 a minute for the voice engine, plus the model and telephony, with a conversation-flow builder and good call analysis built in.
Neither includes phones for your staff. Handing a call to a person means a transfer to another phone system.
Patch is a phone system with the voice agent already inside it. The agent runs on Claude, talks to your API and MCP servers mid-call, and transfers to a person on a Patch softphone when it should. Numbers, call minutes and AI minutes are included in a flat monthly plan, so a minute of AI is one price rather than a platform fee plus a model fee plus a voice fee plus a carrier fee.
You give up some knobs: you do not choose between twenty voices and five models. You gain a phone system your people can use, in your own app, with nothing else to assemble.
| Patch | Vapi | Retell | |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI voice agents | Yes, minutes included | Yes, per minute plus providers | Yes, per minute plus providers |
| Phones for your people | Softphones included, embeddable in your app | No | No |
| What a minute costs | One price, included in the plan | Platform fee plus model, voice and telephony | Engine fee plus model and telephony |
| Choice of model and voice | Claude, with voices tuned for Australian English | Wide choice | Wide choice |
| The agent's tools | HTTP endpoints and MCP servers | HTTP endpoints and MCP servers | HTTP endpoints and MCP servers |
| Running it from code | REST API, webhooks, MCP server for Claude | REST API, SDKs, webhooks | REST API, SDKs, webhooks |
| Australian numbers | Local, mobile, national and toll-free, bought from the API | Through Twilio or another carrier you connect | Through Twilio or another carrier you connect |
| Billed in | Australian dollars, before GST | US dollars | US dollars |
Three people on the phones, an AI agent taking 500 minutes of calls, and 500 minutes of calls between the people. The same month on each.
The Business plan: three numbers, 1,000 call minutes, 500 AI minutes, softphones for everyone, the API, webhooks and the MCP server. Nothing per user.
A$68 to A$104 for 500 AI minutes depending on the model and voice, plus A$137 for three Aircall Essentials users so the staff have phones. Carrier charges not included.
About A$98 for 500 AI minutes, plus A$137 for three Aircall Essentials users. Carrier charges not included.
Competitor prices are from their public pricing pages in October 2026 (Aircall, Bland, Vapi, Retell), converted at A$1.52 to the US dollar. Patch prices are in Australian dollars before GST and come from the live price list.
Pick Vapi or Retell if you want full control over the model, the voice and the speech stack, you are happy to connect your own carrier, and the people side of the phones is someone else's problem.
Pick Patch if you want the agent and the phone system together, Australian numbers without a Twilio account, a flat price per month, and a softphone you can put inside your own product.
Fourteen days free, with a number and an agent of your own. Or ring the demo agent now.
03 5213 3261